Not only can the panels rotate along their own axis, like louvre slats, but the entire panel cluster can rotate relative to the axis of the station. The reason they seem to be pointed in different directions is that they ARE pointing in different directions. The panels are locked in place when a shuttle docks and undocks, so they are probably set in an orientation that gives them the most average power while they are locked in position.

If you're going to be pedantic, the referenced example is actually wrong. The human eye is rather good an unconsciously identifying the "ugly" of humans. Commonly, in absolute terms someone can be "ugly" because they are slightly asymmetrical and yet consciously they would not be able to specifically say why the ugly person is ugly. Thusly, simply saying they are "ugly" would be accurate and accurately describe someone to which another viewer would immediately understand.

The thing you have to remember is that the way the station rotates is completely independent of its position in its orbit around the Earth. It is not tidal locked like the moon. The station most likely faces the sun constantly. It looks like it is tumbling because it is orbiting every 90 minutes. If it has one side facing the sun, then from our point of view it rotates on it's axis every 90 minutes.

Actually, the station itself is always pointing the same way "down" and "forward", i.e. the windows of the Cupola pointing at the earth, the European/Japanese Modules forward. The solar panels can be rotated independent of the entire station. The Station appears to rotate mostly because of the change of perspective while it's flying overhead, much like you see the front, the side and then the back of a car passing you.

XVV (X-axis parallel to the velocity vector) as you describe, is only one of the attitude programs available to the ISS, and granted, it is the one most flown. During assembly procedures, the ISS was in an inertial attitude. The station can also assume a "down and sideways" or YVV attitude, with the Cupola pointing at the Earth and the long axis of the station parallel to the direction of travel. This orientation is usually only used in situations where the angle between the sun and the plane of the ISS

Love how stable the video is while the objects are traveling by at 17,000 mph. And what a great set up. Wow. Just. Wow. Wonder if there are some old Apollo parts up there still in orbit he can capture?

That the greatest barriers to our exploration of space are no longer technological ones, but matters of political and financial pragmatism and conservatism, speaks more. When we're ready again, we'll be up there, and with even more cool stuff than today.

I agree. Too bad he is not a master with HTML5 so I could see this video on the Web instead of having to go to my one computer that has FlashPlayer on it, especially when all of my GPU's have have hardware decoders for the same video file he is hiding in FlashPlayer, same as everyone else's GPU's.

This is an honest question: Now that shuttle discovery has been retired, what exactly are they going to be using to dock to the ISS for both bringing astronauts and supplies to/from there? I read the wikipedia article about the ISS but it didn't say anything.. I don't know why this is such a mystery to me, but I didn't think other countries were actively launching spaceships to it..

The Japanese vehicle is the HTV, for H-II Transfer Vehicle (H-II being the rocket). You forgot to mention that Dragon will be being used for cargo starting this year (probably), as well as Orbital Science's Cygnus (which will probably be pushed to 1H 2012). The US isn't completely out of this yet!

It's also worth noting that you can see all of the currently operational vehicles in the video, if you know what you're looking for, and that this is the only time that will ever be true. Once again kudos to Thi